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SPEECH 

HOI. JEFFERSON DATIS. 

OF MISSISSIPPI 

ON HIS RESOLUTIONS BELATIVE TO 

THE RIGHTS OF PROPERTY IN THE TERRITORIES, ETC. 




DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, MAT 7, 



1S60. 



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States in their sovereign capacity to rSs ,^1! L I ■ benate ' . * hlch represents the 

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Printed by Lemuel Towbeb, at $1 per hundred copies. 



• B 4-6 



Mr. DAVI3, of Mississippi, said : 

Mr. President: Among the many blessings for which we are indebted to our 
ancestry, is that of transmitting to us a written Constitution ; a fixed standard to 
which, in the progress of events, every case may be referred and by which it may 
be measured. But for this the wise men who formed our Government dared not 
have hoped for its perpetuity ; for they saw floating down the tide of time, wreck 
after wreck, marking the short life of every Republic which had preceded them. 
With this, however, to check, to restrain, and to direct their posterity, they 
might reasonably hope the Government they founded should last forever; that 
it would secure the great purposes for which it was ordained and Wtablished ; 
that it would be the shield of their posterity equally in every part of the-country, 
and equally in all time to come. It was this which mainly distinguished the 
formation of our Government from those confederacies or republics which had 
preceded it ; and this is the best foundation for our hope of a perpetuity- to the 
peace, power, and prosperity our Union has conferred. The resolutions which 
have been read, and which I had the honor to present to the Senate^are little 
more than the announcement of what I hold to be the clearly expressed decla- 
rations of the Constitution itself. To that fixed standard it is soughfc, at this 
time, when we are drifting far from the initial point, and when "clouds and 
darkness hover over us, to bring back the Government, and to test our" present 
condition by the rules which our fathers laid down for us in the beginning. 

The differences which exist between distinct portions of the country, the ri- 
valries and the jealousies of to-day, though differing in degree, are exactly of 
the nature of those which preceded the formation of the Constitution. Our 
fathers were aware of the conflicting interests of the navigating and planting- 
States, as they were then regarded. They sought to compose those difficulties, 
and, by compensating advantages given by one to the other, to form a Govern- 
ment equal and just in its operation; and which, like the gentle showers of 
heaven, should fall twice blessed, blessing him that gives and him that receives. 
This beneficial action and reaction between the different interests of the country 
constituted the bond of union and the motive of its formation. They constitute 
it still, if we are sufficiently wise to appreciate our interests, and sufficiently 
faithful to observe our trust. Indeed, with the extension of territory, with the 
multiplication of interests, with the varieties increasing from time to time of 
the products of this vast country, the bonds which bind the Union together 
should have increased. Rationally considered, they have increased, because the 
free trade which was established "by the Union of the States has now become 
more valuable to the people thus united than their trade with the rest of the 
world. 

I do not propose to argue questions of natural rights and inherent powers; 
I plant my reliance upon the Constitution ; that Constitution which we have 
all sworn to support; that Constitution which, as the civil supreme, we have 
solemnly pledged ourselves to maintain while we hold the seats we now occupy 
in the Senate; to which we are bound in its spirit and in its letter, not grudg- 
ingly, but willingly, to render our obedience and support; as long as we hold 
office under the Federal Government; neither in conscience or in conduct can 
there be for us a higher authority. When the tempter entered the garden of 
Eden to taint its purity, to blight its peaceful happiness, and induced our com- 
mon mother to offend against the law which God had given to her through 
Adam, he was the first teacher of that "higher law" which sets the wil of the 
individual above the solemn rule which he is bound, as a part of every commu- 
nity, to observe. From the effect of the introduction of that teaching of the 
higher law in the garden of Eden, and the fall consequent upon it, came sin 
into the world; and from sin came death and banishment and subjugation, as 
the punishments of sin, the loss of life, unfettered liberty, and perfect happi- 
ness followed from that first great law which was given by God to fallen man. 

Why, then, shall we talk about natural rights? Who is to define them? 
Where is the judge that is to sit over the courts to try natural rights? What 
is the era at which you will determine the breadth, the length, and the depth 
of those called the rights of nature? Shall it be after the fall, when woman 
had been made subject, when the earth was covered with thorns, and man had 
to earn his bread in the sweat of his brow? or shall it be when there was 
equality between the sexes, when he lived in the garden, when all his wants 
were supplied, and when thorns and thistles were unknown on the face of the 



earth? Shall it be after the flood, when, for the first sin committed after the 
■waters had retired from the face of the earth, the doom of slavery was fixed 
upon the mongrel descendants of Ham ? If it be after the flood, after those de- 
crees, how idle is this prating about natural rights as though still containing all 
that had been forfeited, as being, in the present condition of man, above the ob- 
ligations of the civil government * The Constitution is the law supreme of every 
American. It is the plighted faith of our fathers ; it is the hope of our posterity. 
Then, I come not to argue questions outside of or above the Constitution, but 
to plead the cause of right, of law and order under the Constitution, and to 
plead it to those who have sworn to abide by its obligations. 

One of the fruitful sources, as I hold it, of the errors which prevail in our 
country, is the theory that this is a Government of one people; that thei Gov- 
ernment of the United States was formed by a mass; and therefore 'X is taken 
that all are responsible for the institutions and policies of each, The Govern- 
ment of the United States is a compact between the sovereign members who 
formed it; and if there be one feature common to all the colonies planted upon 
the shores of America, it was the steady assertion of, and uncompromising de- 
sire for, community independence. It was for this the Puritan, the Huguenot, 
the Catholic, the Quaker, the Protestant, left the land of their nativity, and, 
by the fires of European persecution, whose shadows pointed to an American 
refuge of civil and religious freedom. They did not, however, come here with 
the enlarged idea of no established religion. The Puritans drove out the Qua- 
kers; the Church of England men drove out the Catholics. Persecution reigned 
through the colonies, except, perhaps, that of the Catholic colony of Maryland; 
tha rule was persecution for individual non-couformity. Therefore, I assert the 
common idea, and the only common idea, was community independence — the 
right of each independent people to do as they pleased in their domestic affairs. 

The declaration of independence wa3 made by the colonies, each for itself. 
The recognition of their independence was not for the colonies united, but for 
each of the colonies which had maintained its independence; and so when the 
Constitution was formed, the delegates were not elected by the people en masse, 
but they came from each one of the States; and, when, so formed, it was re- 
ferred, not to the people en masse, but to the States severally, and by them 
severally ratified and. adopted; and this separate, independent action is 
palpably manifest in the different dates at which it received this approval 
of tl*3 States. From fi rs t to last, nearly two years and a half elapsed; and 
the Government went into operation something like a year, before the 
last ratification was made. Is it, then, contended that, by this ratifi- 
cation and adoption of the Constitution, the States surrendered that sover- 
eignty which they had previously gained? Can it be that men who braved 
the perils of the ocean, the privations of the wilderness, who fought the war 
of the Revolution for community independence, should, in the hour of their 
success, when all was sunshine and peace around them, come voluntarily for- 
ward to lay down that boon for which they had suffered so much and so long? 
Reason forbids it ; but rf reason did not furnish a sufficient answer, the action 
of the States, when making the ratification, disproves it. The great State of 
New York — great, relatively, then, as she is now — manifested her wisdom in 
not receiving merely that implication which belongs to the case, and which 
was accepted as a sufficient assurance by the other States, but she entered her 
positive assertion of that retention of her sovereignty and power as the condition 
on which she ratified the Constitution. I read from Elliott's Debates, page 327. 
Among her resolutions of ratification is the following: 

"That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall be- 
come necessary to their happiness; that every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by 
the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the depart- 
ments of the Government thereof, remains to the people of the several States, or to their re- 
spective State governments to whom they may have granted the same." 

North Carolina, with the Scotch caution which subsequent events have so 
well justified, in 1788 passed this resolution : 

" Resolved, That a declaration of rights, asserting and securing from encroachments the 
great principles of civil and religious liberty, and the inalienable rights of the people, together 
with amendments to the most ambiguous and exceptionable parts of the said Constitution otf 
Government, ought to be laid before Congress and the convention of the States that shall or 
may be called for the purpose of amending the said Constitution, for their consideration, 
previous to the ratification of the Constitution aforesaid on the part of the Stato of North 
Carolina." 



And in keeping -with this, North Carolina withheld her ratification; she al- 
lowed the Government to be formed by the number of States which wa6 re- 
quired to put it in operation, and still she remained out of the Union, asserting 
for herself and recognised as separately possessing the independence which she 
had maintained against Great Britain, and which she had no idea of surrender- 
ing to any other power. The last State which ratified the'Constitution, long 
after it had in fact gone into effect, Rhode Island, in the third of her sesolu- 
tions, says : 

"III. That the powers of Government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall 
become necessary to their happiness. That the rights of States respectively to nominate and 
appoint all State officers, and every other power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by the 
said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or to the departments 
of Government thereof, remain to the people of the several States, or their respective State 
governments to whom they may have granted the same." 

Here the use of the phrase ''State governments" shows how utterly unwar- 
rantable the construction that the reference was to the whole people of the 
States — to the people of all the States — and not to the people <>f each of the States 
severally. 

I have spoken of the difference of policies, products, population, constituting 
the great motive of the Union. It, indeed, was its necessity. Had all the people 
been alike — had their institutions all been the ssme — there would have been no 
interest to bring them together; there would have been no cause for commer- 
cial regulation or necessity for restraint being imposed upon them. It was the 
fact that they differed which rendered it necessary to have some law governing 
their intercourse. It was the fact that their products were opposite — that their 
pursuits were various — that rendered it the great interest of the people that 
they should have free trade; such free trade, said Dr. Franklin, between the 
.States as existed between the counties of England. 

Since that era, however, a fibre then unknown in the United States, and the 
■production of which is dependent upon the domestic institution of African 
slavery, has come to be cultivated in such amounts, to enter so largely into the 
investments of manufacturers, into the productive wealth of the world, so 
greatly to add to the employment of the industrious and contribute to the com- 
fort of the poor, that it may be said that little fibre, cotton, wraps the commer- 
cial world and binds it to the United States in bonds to keep the peace with us 
which no government of Europe would likely break. It has built up the gteat 
manufacturing cities of the western States. It supports their shipping, the for- 
eign as well as the coast-wise trade. It enables them to purchase in the market 
of China, when the high premium to be paid on the milled dollar would other- 
wise exclude them from that market. These are a part of the blessings result- 
ing from that increase and variety of product which could not have existed if 
our domestic institutions had all been alike; and which would have been lost 
unless free trade between the United States had been granted and preserved. 

And here I will remark that it strikes me as more than wonderful, that a book 
recently issued han received the commendation of a lartre number of the rep- 
resentatives of the manufacturing and commercial States, though, apart from its 
falsification of statistics and low abuse of southern States, institutions, and in- 
terests, the feature which stands prominently out from it, is the arraignment of 
the South for using their surplus money in buying the manufactures of the 
North. How a manufacturing and commercial people can be truly represented 
by those who would inculcate such doctrines as these, is to me passing strange. 
Is it vain boasting which renders them anxious to proclaim to the world that we 
buy our buckets, our rakes, and our shovels from them? No, they have too 
much good sense for that ; and therefore I am at a loss to understand the motive, 
unless it be that deep-rooted hate which makes them blind to their own inter- 
est when that interest is weighed in the balance with the denunciation and de- 
traction of their brethren of the South. 

The great principle which lay at the foundation of this fixed standard, the 
Constitution of the United States, was the equality of rights among the State". 
The recognition of this was essential; it was necessary; it was a step which 
had to be taken, before further progress could be made. It was the essential 
attribute of sovereignty in tho State ; the primary condition of a federal com- 
pact voluntarily entered into between sovereigns; and it is that equality of 
.right under the Constitution on which we now insist But more, when the 



States united they transferred their forts, their armament, their ship?,, and their 
right to maintain armies and navies, to the Federal Government. It was the 
disarmament of the States, under the operation of a league which constituted 
a general agent and made the warlike operations, the powers of defence, com- 
mon to them all. Then, with this equality of the States, with this disarmament 
of them, if there had been nothing in the Constitution to express it, I say the 
federal duty to afford protection to. every constitutional right would follow as 
a necessary incident, and could not be denied by any one who could understand 
and would admit the true theory of such a Government. 

"We claim protection, first, because it is our right; secondly, because it is the 
Government to ensure " 
ogether, which depri 
ight otherwise emplc 
eral theory of the right of protection. What is the exception to it? _ Is then? 
an exception? If so, who made it? Does the Constitution discriminate be- 
tween different kinds of property ? Did the Constitution attempt to assimilate 
the institutions of the different States confederated together? Was there a 
single State in this Union that would have been so unfaithful to the principles 
declared and maintained in their colonial condition, and which had prompted 
them at a still earlier period, to brave the privations of the wilderness — is there 
one which would have consented to allow the Federal Government to control 
her domestic affairs or to discriminate between her institutions and those of her 
confederate States. 

But if it be contended that this is only argument, and that you need authority, 
I will draw it from the fountain — from the spring before it had been polluted ; 
from the debates in the formation of the Constitution, from the views of those 
who, it will be admitted, at least, understood what the convention designed to 
do. Mr. Randolph, it will be recollected, introduced a projet for a government, 
consisting of a series of resolutions. Among them was one which proposed to 
give Congress the power "to call forth the force of the Union against any mem- 
ber of the Union failing to fulfill its duty under the articles thereof." That was, 
to give Congress the power to coerce the States; to bring the States into sub- 
jection to the Federal Government Now, sir, let us see how that was treated ; 
'and first I will refer to one whose wisdom, as we take a retrospective view, 
eeems to me marvellous. Not conspicuous in debate — at least not among the 
names which first occur when we think of that bright galaxy of patriots and 
statesmen — he was the man who, above all others, laid his finger upon every 
danger^ and indicated the course which that danger was to take. I refer to Mr. 
Mason. 

" Mr. Mason observed, not onlv that the present Confederation was deficient in not providing 
for coercion aud punishment against delinquent States, but argued very cogently that punish- 
ment could not, in the nature of things, be executed on the States collectively ; aud, therefore, 
that such a government was necessary as could directly operate on individuals, and would 
punish those only whose guilt required it."— Elliott's Debates, vol. 5, page 133. 

Mr. Madison, who has been sometimes called the father of the Constitution, 
upon the same question, said : 

"A union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruc- 
tion. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an in- 
fliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attaeked as a dissolu- 
tion of all previous compacts by which it might be bound." 

Mr. Hamilton, who, to express a judgment by way of comparison, I would 
say was the master intellect of the age in which he lived— whose mind seemed 
to penetrate profoundly every question with which he grappled, and who sel- 
dom failed to exhaust the subject which he treated— Mr. Hamilton, enumerat- 
ing the various powers necessary to maintain a Government, said: 

"4 Force bv which may be understood a coercion of laws, or coercion, of arms. Con- 
gress have not the former, except in few cases. In particular States, this coercion is nearly 
sufficient ; though he held it, In most cases, not entirely so. A certain portion of military force 
is absolutely necessary in large communities. Massachusetts is now feeling this necessity, and 
making provision for it. But how can this force be exerted on the States collec lvely . H is 
impossible. It amounts to a war between the parties. Foreign powers, also, will not be idle 
spectators. They will interpose; the confusion will increase; and a dissolution ot the Union 
will ensue." 

The proposition was lost. , 

In support of universality of this idea of community independence, which I 
have suggested, the argument may be adduced which arose upon the proposi- 



6 

tion least likely to have exhibited it, that to give power to restrain the further 
importation of African slaves. On that occasion it appears that northern and 
southern men, arguing and presenting different views, resulting from their 
t different stand-points, yet, all concurred in this, that there should be no power 
to restrain a State from importing what she pleased. As the Senator from Ver- 
mont (Mr, Collamer) looks somewhat surprised at my statement, I will refer to 
the authority. Mr. Rutledge said: 

" Religion and humanity bad nothing to do with this question. Interest alone is the govern- 
ing principle with nations The true question at present is, whether the Southern States shall 
or shall not be parties to the Uuion. If the Northern States consult their interest, they will 
not oppose the increase of slaves, which will increase the commodities of which they will be- 
come the carriers." — Elliott's Debates, vol. 5, p. 457. 

"Mr. Pincknev. South Carolina can never receive the plan if it prohibits the slave trade. 
In every proposed extension of the powers of Congress that State has expressly aud watchful- 
ly excepted that of meddling with the importation of negroes. If the States be all left at liber- 
ty on this subject. South Carolina may perhaps, by degrees, do of herself what is wished, as 
Virginia and Maryland already have done." — Ibid, p. 457. 

'•Mr. Sherman was for leaving the clause as it stands. He disapproved of the slave trade ; 
yet, as the States were now possessed of the right to import slaves, as the public good did not 
require it to be taken from them, and as it was expedient to have as few objections as possible 
to the proposed scheme of Government, he thought it best to leave the matter as we find it." — 
Page 457. 

" Mr. Baldwin had conceived national objects alone to be before the convention : not such 
as, like the present, were of a local nature. Georgia was decided on this point. That State 
has always hitherto supposed a General Government to be the pursuit of the central States, 
who wished to have a vortex for everything; that her distance would preclude her from equal 
advantage ; and that she could not prudently purchase it by yielding national powers. From 
this, it might be understood in what light she would view an attempt to abridge one of her 
favorite prerogatives. 

"If left to herself, she may probably put a stop to the evil. As one ground for this conjec- 
ture, he took notice of the sect of , which, he said, was a respectable class of people who 

carried their ethics beyond the mere equality of men, extending their humanity to the claims 
of ttie whole animal creation." — -Page 459. 

"Mr. Gekry thought we had nothing to do with the conduct of the States as to slaves, but 
ought to be careful not to give any sanction to it." — Page 459. 

" Mr. King thought the subject should be considered in a political light only. If two States 
■will not agree to the Constitution, as stated on one side, he could affirm with equal belief, on 
the other, that great and equal opposition would be experienced from the other States. He 
remarked on the exemption of slaves from duty, whilst every other import was subjected to it, 
as an inequality that could not fail to strike the commercial sagacity of the Northern and Mid- 
dle States."— Page 400. 

Here, as will be observed, everywhere was recognized and admitted the doc- 
trine of community independence and State equality — no interference with the 
institutions of a State ; no interference even prospectively, save and except with 
their consent; and thus it followed that at one time it was proposed to except, 
from the power to prohibit the further introduction of Africans, those States 
which insisted upon retaining that power; and finally it was agreed that a 
date should be fixed beyond which, probably none of them desired to retain it. 
These were States acting in their sovereign capacity ; the}' possessed power to 
grant or withhold as they pleased; and that was the view which they took of 
it. I ask, then, how are we, their descendants, those holding under delegated 
authority, to assume a power over domestic institutions which they refused to 
admit, either as a purpose or a function, because opposed to principles eternal 
and lying at the foundation of the Constitution? 

If, then, protection generally be the duty (and who will deny it?) with which 
this Government is charged, for which the States pay taxes, because of which 
they surrendered their armies and navies ; no exemption, no remission, no ex- 
ception being made, I ask, in the name of reason and constitutional right — I ask 
to be pointed to authority by which a discrimination is made between slave 
propert}' and any other. Yet this is the question now fraught with greatest 
danger to our country. This has raised the hurricane which threatens to sweep 
our political fabric before it, to blot out the constellation of the Union from the 
political firmament of mankind. Does it not become us, then, calmly to consider 
it, justly to weigh it; to hold it in balances from which the dust has been blown, 
in order that we may see where truth, right, and the obligations of the Consti- 
tution requires us to go? 

It may be excusable in one who, from his youth has been connected with a 
particular party, and has believed that the welfare and the safety of the coun- 
try most securely rested upon it, who has seen in the triumph of Democracy 
the triumph of the Union, and who has feared for years past that the downfall 
of Democracy would be it destruction. It may be permitted, I say, under such 



circumstances as these, to such a person as that, to refer in connection with the 
point which I am discussing, to the recent action of that party in general con- 
vention. Delegates from all the States met together to consult as brethren, to 
see whether they could agree as well upon the candidate as upon the creed for our 
party, but soon 'it was apparent that division had entered into our ranks. After 
days of discussion that party convention was broken. The enemies of Democra- 
cy exultingly waited for its' funeral, and rejoiced in the blank faces of those to 
whom the'telegraph brought the sad intelligence of Democratic disruption. I 
hope this darkened sky is, however, but the fleeting cloud of the morning. ' 1 
have faith in the Democracy, and that it still lives. I have faith that it will, 
in due time, assert the truth, boldly pronounce it, meet the issue, and I trust in 
the good sense and patriotism of the people for success. 

Not least among the causes for apprehension is the present condition of par- 
ties in our countrv. For a long time two parties divided the people, not the 
sections, of the United States. The controversy was mainly upon questions of 
expediency — sometimes of constitutionality. They were not geographical, or 
constant, and therefore varyingly divided men in all of the States. The contest 
was sometimes sained by one, and sometimes by the other. The "Whig party 
lives but in history, yet" it has a history of which any of its members may 
be proud. It bore' the high, but not successful, part of stemming the tide of 
popular impulse, and thus failed to attain the highest power. Differing from 
them upon the points at issue, I offer the homage of my respect to those who, ad- 
hering to'what they believed to be true, went down sooner than find success in 
the abandonment of principle. With the disappearance of that party, and.per- 
haps for the very reasons that caused its disappearance, arose radical organiza- 
tions who so far" outran progressive Democracy, that Democracy took the place 
left vacant by the old Whig party, and became the reservoir of all which re- 
mained of conservatism. Therefore it is that so many of those men, eminent in 
their day, eminent for their services, and in their history, have esnoused 
the Democratic party, in the present condition of the country, as tne only con- 
servative element which remains in our polities. In the midst of this radical- 
ism, of this revolutionary tendency, it becomes not the regret of a partisan 
merely; but of an American citizen that the party on which the best 
hopes of the country hang is threatened with division, and possibly may not 
hereafter be, as heretofore, united. Thanks to a sanguine temperament, and 
to an abiding faith, thanks to a confidence in the Providence which has so long 
ruled for good the destiny of my country, I believe it will reunite, and reunite 
upon sound and acceptable principles. At least, this is my ardent wish and 
earnest hope. 

From the postulates which I have laid down result the fourth and faith reso- 
lutions. These are the two which I expect to be most opposed. They contain 
the assertion of the equality of rights of all the people of the United States 
in the Territories, and they declare the obligation of Congress to see these 
rights protected. This presents the subject of federal duties and popular rights 
in"the Territories. I admit that the United States may acquire eminent domain. 
I admit that the United States may have sovereignty over territory ; otherwise 
the sovereign iurisdiction which we obtained by conquest or treaty would not 
pass to us. I deny that their agent, the Federal Government, under the exist- 
ing Constitution, can have eminent domain; I deny that it oan have sovereign- 
ty. I consider it as the agent of the States — an agent of limited power ; and 
that it can do nothing save that which the Constitution authorizes it to per- 
form; and that, though the treaty or the deed of cession may direct or control, 
it cannot enlarge or expand the powers of Congress. That the Federal Gov- 
ernment is not sovereign, though'it has functions to perform, which belong 
to sovereignty, and those functions I propose now to consider. 

The power of Congress to rule over the Territories— a subject not well re- 
fined in the Constitution of the United States — has been drawn from various 
sources by different advocates of that power. Some have found it in the grant 
of power to dispose of the territory and other public property. That is to say, 
because the agent was authorized to sell a particular thing, or to dispose of it 
by grant or barter, for specified purpose, therefore he has sovereign power over 
that and over all else which the principal constituting him an agent may here- 
after acquire! The property, besides the land, consisted of forts, of ships, ot 
armaments, and other things which had belonged to the States in their separate 



8 

capacity, and were turned over to the Government of the Confederation, and 
transferred to the Government of the United States, and of this, together with 
the land so transferred, the Federal Government was authorized to dispose ; 
and of territory thereafter acquired, of arms thereafter made or purchased, of 
forts, or custom-houses, or docks, or light-houses, or arsenals thereafter con- 
structed ; of all these, of course if it had power to create them, it must, of 
necessity, have had the power to dispose. It was only necessary to confer 
power over those things which the Federal Government did not create, those 
which came to it from the States, and over which they might, as property, 
have retained control. 

I look upon the clause referred to, as giving the mere power to dispose of, 
for considerations and objects defined in the trust, the land belonging to the 
United States, none of which then was within the limits of a State, and the 
other public property which the United States received from the States after 
the formation of the Union. 

I do not agree, however, with those who say the Government has no power 
to establish a temporary and civil government within a Territory. I stand 
half way between the extremes of squatter sovereingty and of congressional 
sovereignty. I hold that Congress has power to establish a civil government ; 
that it derives it from the grants of the Constitution — not the one which has 
been referred to ; and I hold that that power is limited and restrained, first by 
the Constitution to its defined boundaries, and then within those by every rule 
of popular liberty and sound discretion, to the narrowest limits which the ne- 
cessities of the case permit. Congress has power to defend the territory, to re- 
pel invasion, to suppress insurrection; to enact the laws necessary to carry out 
its delegated power, and to see the laws executed. For this, it may have a civil 
magistrjaey — Territorial courts. It has the power to establish a Federal judi- 
ciary, to which may come up to be decided, from these local courts, questions 
with re -'ird to the laws and the Constitution of the United States. These, 
combined, give power to establish a temporary government sufficient, perhaps, 
for the simple wants of the inhabitants of a Territory, until they shall ac- 
quire the population, until they shall have the resources and the interests 
which justify them in becoming a State. I am sustained in this view of the 
case by an opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1842, in the 
case of Pollard's lessee vs. P. Hagau, (3 Howard, 222, 223,) in which the court 
says: 

"Taking the legislative acts of the Uuited States, and the States of Virginia and Georgia, 
and their deeds of cession to the United States, and giving to each separately, and to all joint- 
ly, a fair interpretation, we must come to the conclusion that it was the intention of the parties 
to invest the United States with the eminent domain of the country ceded, both national and 
municipal, for the purposes of temporary government; and to hold it in trust for the perform- 
ance of the stipulations and conditions expressed in the deeds of cession and the legislative 
acts connected with them." 

This was a question of land. It was land lying between high and low water, 
over which the United States claimed to have and to exercise authority be- 
cause of the terms on which Alabama had been admitted into the Union. In 
that connection, the court say in the same case : 

" When Alabama was admitted into the Union, on au equal footing with the original States, 
she succeeded to all the righte of sovereignty, jurisdiction, and eminent domain which Georgia 
possessed at the date of the cession, except so far as this right was diminished by the public 
lands remaining in the possession and under the control of the United States for the temporary 
purpose provided lor in the deeds of cession and the legislative acts connected with it. Noth- 
ing remained to the United Stages, according to the terms of the agreement, but the public 
lands; and if an express stipulation had been inserted in the agreement, granting the muni- 
cipal right of Sovereignty and eminent domain to the United States, such stipulation woald 
have been void and inoperative; because the United States has no constitutional capacity to 
exercise municipal jurisdiction, sovereignty, or eminent domain, within the limits of a State 
or elsewhere, except in the cases in which it is expressly granted." 

Another case arose, not long afterwards, in which, not land, but religion was 
involved, where suit was brought against, the municipality of New Orleans be- 
cause they would not allow a dead body to b,e exposed at a place where, ac- 
cording to the religious rites of those interested, it was deemed they had a 
right thus to expose it. On that the Supreme Court say, speaking of the ordi- 
nance for the government of Louisiana : 

" So far as they conferred political rights and secured civil and religious liberties (which are 
political rights) the laws of Congress were all suspended by the State constitution ; nor is any 
part of them In force, unless they were adopted by the constitution of Louisiana as laws of the 
State." — Permoli vs. Mrst Municipality, 3 Howard, 610. 



9 

Thus we find the Supreaie Court sustaining the proposition that the Federal 
Government has power to establish a temporary civil government within the 
limits of a Territory; but that it can enact no law which will endure beyond 
the temporary purposes for which such government was established. In other 
cases the decisions of the court are to the same effect; and in 1855 the then 
Attorney General, most learned in his profession — and in what else is he not 
learned, for he may be said to be a man of universal acquirements? — Attorney 
General Cushing then foretold what must have been the decision of the Supreme 
Court on the Missouri compromise, anticipating the decision subsequently made 
in the case of Dred Scott; that decision for which the venerable justices have 
been so often and so violently arraigned. He foretold it as the necessary con- 
sequence from the line of precedents descending from 1842, affirmed and reaf- 
firmed in different cases, and now bearing on a case similiar in principle, and 
only different in the subject involved from those which had gone before. As 
connected with the decision which has agitated the peace of the country; as 
the anticipation of that decision, viewing it as the necessary consequence of the 
decisions which the court had made before ; if it be the pleasure of the Senate, 
I ask my friend from South Carolina to read for me a letter of the Attorney 
General, being an official answer made by him in relation to the military reser- 
vation which was involved in the question before him. 

Mr. CHESNUT read from the Opinions of the Attorneys General, volume 1, 
page 575 : 

"The Supreme Court has determined that the United States never held any municipal sov- 
ereignty, jurisdiction, or right of soil in the territory of which any of the new States have been 
formed, except for temporary purposes, and to execute the trusts created by the deeds of ces- 
sion." 

************ 

" By the force of the same principle, and in the same line of adjudications, the Supreme 
Court wonld have had to decide that the provision of the act of March 6, 1S20, which under- 
takes to determine in advauee the municipal law of all that portiou of the original province of 
Louisiana which lies north of the parallel of 30 deg. 30 min. north latitude was null and void 
ab incepto, if it had not been repealed by a receut act of Congress. (Comp. IV. Stat, at Large, 
p. S4S, and S. Stat, at Large, p. 2S9.) For an act of Congress which pretends of right, and 
without consent or compact, to impose on the municipal power of any new State or States limi- 
tations and restrictions not imposed on all, is contrary to the fundamental condition of the Con- 
federation, according to which there is to be equality of right between the old and new States 
' in all respects whatsoever.' " 

Mr. DAVIS. It was not long after this official opinion of the Attorney Gen- 
eral before the case arose on which the decision was made which has so agitated 
the country. Fortunate, indeed, was it for the public peace that land and re- 
ligion had "been previously decided — those questions on which men might rea- 
son had been the foundation of judicial decision — before that, which it seems, 
drives all reason from the mind of man, came to be presented ; the question 
whether Cuffee should be kept in his normal condition or not; the question 
whether the Congress of the United States could decide what might or might 
not be property in a Territory. The case being that of an officer of the army 
sent into a Territory to perform his public duty and who had taken with him 
his negro slave. The Court, however, in giving their decision in this case — or 
their opinion, if it suits gentlemen better — have gone into the question with 
such clearness, such precision, and such amplitude, that it will relieve me from 
the necessity of arguing it any further than to make a reference to some sen- 
tences contained in that opinion. And here let me say, I cannot see how those 
who agreed on a former occasion that the constitutional right of the slaveholder 
to take his property into the Territory — the constitutional power of the Con- 
gress and that of the Territory to legislate upon the subject — should be a judi- 
cial question, can now attempt to escape the operation of an opinion which 
covers the exact political question which it was known beforehand the court 
W-ould be called upon to decide. It was known it could not be decided fully, 
finally, and in strictness of technical language. Hundreds, thousands of cases 
may arise, centuries may elapse, and leave that court, if our Union still exists, 
deciding questions in relation to that character of property in the Territories ; 
but the great and fundamental idea was that, after thirty years of angry con- 
troversy, dividing the people and paralyzing the arm of the Federal Govern- 
ment, some umpire should be sought which would compose the difficulty and 
set it upon a footing to leave us in future to proceed in peace; and that umpir.e 
was selected which the Constitution had provided to decide questions of con- 
stitutional law. I ask my friend to read some extracts from the decision. 



10 

Mr. CHESNUT read as follows, from the ease of Dred Scott vs. Sandford, pp. 
55, 56, and 57 : 

" The Territory being a part of the United States, the Government and the citizen both enter 
it under the authority of the Constitution, with their respective rights defined and marked out ; 
and the Federal Government can exercise no power over his person or property beyond what 
that instrument confers, nor lawfully deny any right which it has reserved. * * * 

" The powers over person and property of which we speak are not only not granted to Con- 
gress, but are in expressed terms denied, and they are forbidden to exercise them. And this 
prohibition is not confined to the States, but the words are general, and extend to the whole 
territory over which the Constitution gives it power to legislate, including those portions of it 
remaining under territorial government, as well as that covered by States. It is a total ab- 
sence of power everywhere within the dominion of the United States, and places the citizens 
of a Territory, so far as these rights are concerned, on the same footing with citizens of the 
States, and guards them as firmly and plainly against anj" inroads which the General Govern- 
ment might attempt under the pica of implied or incidental powers. And if Congress itself 
cannot do thic — if it is beyond the powers conferred on the Federal Government — it will be 
admitted, we presume, that it could not authorize a territorial government to exercise them. 
It could confer no power on any local government, established by its authority, to violate the 
provisions of the Constitution." 

"And if the Constitution recognises the right of property of the master in a slave, and makes 
no distinction betweeh that description of property and other property owned by a citizen, no 
tribunal, acting under the authority of the United States, whether it be legislative, executive, 
or judicial, has a right to draw such a distinction, or deny to it the benefit of the provisions and 
guarantees which have been provided for the protection of private property against the en- 
croachments of the Government. 

"This is done in plain words — too plain to be misunderstood. And no word can be found 
in the Constitution which gives Congress a greater power over slave property, or which en- 
titles property of that kind to less protection than property of any other description. The only 
power conferred is the power coupled with the duty of guarding and protecting the owner in 
his rights. 

'• Upon these considerations, it is the opinion of the Court that the act of Congress which 
prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the 
United States north of the line therein mentioned is not warranted by the Constitution, and is 
therefore void ; and that neither Dred Scott himself nor any of his family were made free by 
being carried into this territory, even if they had been carried there by the owner with the in- 
tention of becoming a permanent resident." 

Mr. DAVIS. Here, then, Mr. President, I say the umpire selected as the 
referee in the controversy has decided that neither the Congress nor its agent, 
the territorial government, has the power to invade or impair the right of pro- 
perty within the limits of a Territory, but is bound to guard and protect it. I 
will not inquire whether it be technically a decision or not. It is obligatory 
on those "who selected the umpire and agreed to abide by the award. 

It is well known to those who have been associated with me in the two 
houses of Congress that, from the commencement of the question, I have been 
the determined opponent of what is called squatter sovereignty. I never gave 
it countenance, and I am now least of all disposed to give it quarter. In 1848 
it made its appearance for good purposes. It was ushered in by a great and 
good man. lie brought it forward because of that distrust which he had in 
the capacity of the Government to bear the rude shock to which it was exposed. 
His apprehension, no doubt, to some extent sharpened and directed his patri- 
otism, and his reflection led him to a conclusion, from which it was my fortune, 
good or ill, to dissent, when his letter was read to me in manuscript ; I, together 
with some other persons, being asked, though hot by the writer, whether or 
not it should be sent out as the expression of our political creed. At the first 
view, I believed it to be a fallacy — and one fraught with mischief; that it 
avoided the issue which was upon us which it was our duty to meet; but that 
it escaped it by a side path which led to greater danger. 1 thought it a fallacy 
which would surely be exploded.. I doubted then, and still more for some time 
afterwards, when held to a heavy responsibility for the position which 1 occupied, 
whether I should live to see that result. It has been more speedily exploded, 
and to the country with more injurious consequences, than I anticipated. 
In the mean time, what has been its operation? Let Kansas speak — the first 
great field on which the trial was made. What was there the consequence? 
The Federal Congress withdrawing control, leaving the contending sections, ex- 
cited to the highest point upon this question, each to send forth its army, Kan- 
sas became the battle field, and Kansas the cry which well-nigh led to civil 
war. This was its first fruit More deadly than the fatal upas, its effect was 
not limited to the mere spot of ground on which the due fell from its leaves, 
but it spread throughout tne United States; it kindled all the in flam able mate- 
rial which had been for years collected. It was owing to the strength of the 



11 

popular respect for our Government and the good sense of the quiet masses, 
that it did not wrap our country in one wide spread conflagration. 

What ria;ht had Congress theu, or what right has it now, to abdicate any 
power conferred upon it as trustee of the States? What can we weigh against 
the great interests of which we are conservators; against the welfare of the 
country, and the liberty of our posterity to the remotest ages? If any one 
believes that Congress has not the constitutional power, he acts conscienciously 
in insisting that Congress do not usurp it. He who believes that the squatters 
upon the lands of the United States, within a Territory, are invested with 
sovereignty, having won it by some of those processes unknown to history, 
without grant or without revolution, without money and without price, ad- 
hering to such theory, may pursue it to its conclusion. To the first c'ass, that 
which claims sovereign power over the Territories, for Congress, I say, turn to 
the Constitution, and find there the warrant of your authority. Of the second, 
that of which I have last spoken, I ask, what is there in the Constitution, in 
reason, right, or justice, to sustain this theory? 

The plfraseology which has been employed on this question seems to me to 
betray a strange confusion of ideas. To speak of a sovereignty, a plenary 
legislative power deriving its authority from an agent; a sovereignty held sub- 
ject to articles with the formation of which that sovereignty had nothing to 
do ; a compact to which it was not a party ! You say to a sovereign, "A and B 
have agreed on certain terms between themselves, and you must govern your 
conduct according to them; yet I do not deny your sovereignty !" That is the 
power to do as they please, provided it conforms to the rule which others chose 
to lay down! Can this be a definition of sovereignty ? 

Nothing seems to me more illogical than the argument that this power is 
acquired by a grant from Congress, connected with the other argument that 
Congress have not got the power to do the act themselves — that is to say, that 
the recipient takes more than the giver possessed ; that a Territorial Legislature 
can do anything which a State Legislature can do, and that "subject to the 
Constitution" means merely the restraints imposed upon both. This is con- 
founding the whole theory and the history of our Government. The States 
were the grantors; they made the compact; they gave the Federal agent its 
powers; they inhibited themselves from doing certain things, and all else they 
retained to themselves. This Federal agent got just so much as the States chose 
to give, and no more. It could do nothing save by the authority of the grant 
made by the States. Therefore its powers are not comparable to the powers of 
the State Legislature, because one is the creature of grant, and the other the 
exponent of sovereign power. The Supreme Court have covered the whole 
ground of the relation of Congress to the Territorial Legislatures— the agent of 
the States and the agent of Congress— and the restrictions put upon the one 
are there put upon the other, in language so clear as to render it needless 
further to elaborate the subject. 

In 1850, following the promulgation of this notion of squatter sovereignty, 
we had the idea of non-intervention introduced into the Senate of the United 
States, and it is admirable to see how that idea has expanded. It seems to have 
been more malleable than gold, to have been hammered out to an extent that 
covers boundless regions undiscovered by those who proclaimed the doctrine. 
Non-inteiveution then meant, as the debates show, that Congress should neither 
prohibit nor establish slavery in the Territories. To that I hold now. Will 
any one suppose that non-intervention then meant that Congress should not 
legislate at all in respect to property in slaves? The acts which they passed 
at the time forbid that conclusion. There is a fugitive-slave law, and that 
abominable law which assumed to confiscate the property of a citizen who 
should bring it into this District with intent to remove it to sell it at some other 
time and at some other place. Congress acted then upon the subject, acted be- 
yond the limit of its authority, as I confidently believed; and, if ever that act 
comes before the Supreme Court, I feel satisfied that they will declare it void. 
Are we to understand that these men, thus acting at the very moment, inten- 
ded by non-intervention to deny and repudiate the laws they were then cre- 
ating? The man who stood most prominently the advocate of the measures 
of that year, who, great in many periods of our history, perhaps shone then 
with the brightest light his genius ever emitted — I refer to Henry Clay — has 
given his own view on this subject ; and I suppose he may be considered as the 



12 

highest authority. On June 18, 1850, I had introduced an amendment to the 
compromise bill, providing : 

" And that all laws, or parts of laws, usages, or customs, pre-existing in the Territories ac- 
quired by the United States from Mexico, and which in said Territories restrict, abridge or 
obstruct the full enjoyment of any right of person or property of a citizen of the United States, 
as recognized or guarantied by the Constitution or laws of the United States, are hereby de- 
clared and shall be held as repealed." 

Upon that, Mr. Clay said : 

"Mr. President, I thought that upon this subject there had been a clear understanding in 
the Senate that the Senate would not decide itself upon the lex loci as it respects slavery; that 
the Senate would not allow the territorial legislature to pass any law upon that question. In 
other words, that it would leave the operation of the local law or of the Coustitution of the 
United States upon that local law to be decided by the proper and competent tribunal — the Su- 
preme Court of the United States." — Appendix to Congressional Globe, Thirty-first Congress, 
first session, p. 916. 

That was the position taken by Mr. Clay, the leader. A mere sentence will 
show with what view I regarded the dogma of non-intervention when that 
amendment was offered. I said : 

" But what is non-intervention seems to vary as often as the light and shade of every fleet>- 
ing cloud. It has different meanings in every State, in every county, in every town. If non- 
intervention means that we shall not have protection for our property in slaves, then I always 
was, and always shall be, opposed to it. If it means that we shall not have the protection of 
the law because it would favor slaveholders, that Congress shall not legislate so as to secure to 
us the benefits of the Constitution, then I am opposed to non-intervention, and always shall 
be opposed to it." — Appendix tu Congressional Globe, Thirty-first Congress, first session, 
p. 919. 

Mr. Downs, one of the committee of thirteen, and an advocate of the mea- 
sures, said: 

" What I understand by non-intervention Is, an interposition of Congress prohibiting, or es- 
tablishing, or interfering with slavery."— Appendix to Congressional Globe, Thirty-first Con- 
gress, first session, p. 919. 

By what species of legerdemain this doctrine of non-intervention has been 
so construed as to paralyse the Government on the whole subject, to exclude 
Congress from any kind of legislation whatever, I am at a loss to conceive. Cer- 
tain it is, it was not the theory at that period, and it was not contended for in 
any of the controversies we had then upon that question. I had no faith in it 
then ; I considered it an evasion ; I held that Congress ought to perform its duty ; 
that the issue was before us, and ought to be met, the sooner the better; that 
truth would prevail if presented to the* people; borne down to-day, it would 
rise up to-morrow: I stood then on the same general plea which I am making 
now. The Senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas) and myself differed at that time, 
as I presume we do now. We differed radically then. He opposed every pro- 
position which I made, refusing to give power to a Territorial Legislature to 
protect slave property which should be taken there; to remove the obstruction 
of the Mexican laws; voting for a proposition to exclude the conclusion that 
slavery might be taken there ; voting for the proposition expressly to prohibit 
its introduction ; voting for the proposition to keep in force the laws of Mexico 
which prohibited it. Some of these votes, it is but just to him I should say, I 
think he c;ave in obedience to his instructions ; but others of them, I think it is 
equally fair to suppose, were outside of the limits of any instructions which 
could have been given before the fact. 

In 1851, advancing in this same general line of thought. Congress, in enact- 
ing Territorial bills; left out a provision which had usually been contained in 
them, requiring the legislature of the Territory to submit its laws to the Con- 
gress of the United States. It has been sometimes assumed that this was the 
recognition of the power of the Territorial Legislature to exercise plenary legis- 
lation, in the same manner as a State. It will be remembered that, when our 
present form of Government was instituted, there were those who believed the 
Federal Government ought to have the power of revision over the laws of a 
State. This was long and ably contended for in the convention which 
formed the Constitution ; and one of the compromises which was made was, to 
lodire an appellate power in the Supreme Court to decide all questions of con- 
stitutional law, 

Lut did this omission of the obligation to send here the laws of the Territo- 
ries cede this grant of power to the Territorial Legislature? Certainly not ; 
it could not, and that it did not is proved by the fact that at a subsequent pe- 



13 

riod the organic act was revised because the legislation of the Territory of Kan- 
sas was offensive to Congress, Congress could not abdicate its authority; it 
could not abandon its trust; and when it omitted the requirement that the 
laws should be sent back, it created a casus which required it to act without 
the official records being laid before it, as they would have been if the obliga- 
tion had existed. That was all the difference. It was not enforcing upon the 
agent the obligation to send the information. It left Congress as to its power 
just where the Constitution placed it; which, in 1S56, was defined to be for the 
Territories such non intervention as was proper in the States and in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia. I find myself physically unable to go as fully into this sub- 
ject as I intended, and therefore omitting a reference to those acts, suffice it to 
say, that here was the recognition of the obligation of Congress to interpose 
against a Territorial Legislature for the protection of personal right. That is 
what we ask of Congress now. I do not ask Congress to go into speculative 
lecislation. I am not one of those who would willingly see Congress enact a 
a code to be applied to all Territories and for all time to come. I only ask that 
cases, as they arise, may be met according to the exigency. I ask that when 
personal and property rights in the Territories are not by existing laws and 
governmental machinery adequately protected, then the Congress shall inter- 
vene and provide such means as will secure in each case, as far as may be, an 
adequate remedy. I ask no slave code, no horse code, no machine code. I ask 
that the Territorial Legislature be made to understand before hand that the 
Congress of the United States does not concede to them the power to interfere 
with the rights of person or property guarantied by the Constitution, and that 
it will apply the remedy, if the Territorial Legislature should so far forget it« 
duty — so far transcend its power — as to commit that violation of right. That 
is the announcement of the fifth resolution. 

My colleague arraigned that resolution because it did not go far enough. He 
thought the mere proposition to act, when necessary, did not meet the case 
because, he said, the necessity had arisen. To that my answer is, that here I 
a^k the Senate to declare great truths for to-day, and for all time to come; to 
bring back the popular judgment to the standard of the Constitution ; that I 
am not seeking legislation in these resolutions; I am but making declarations 
an which legislation may be founded. They will speak a restraining voice to 
the Territorial Legislatures. They will speak our sentiments as to the rights 
of person and property, the obligation and duties of the Constitution. It is 
for that purpose I introduced them ; it is for that purpose I seek the vote of the 
Senate. At some other time I may institute a comparison between these reso- 
lutions and their doctrines, and those of some others before us, particularly 
those of my colleague, who has twice criticised mine, once very harshly when 
I was detained b} r illness from the Senate. I will only say now, however, 
that his second resolution contains what I consider too near an affiliation with 
his "distinguished friend from Illinois." The admission that every Territory 
when organized is to exercise legislative power inclines rather too much to the 
direction of squatter sovereignty. At an earlier period of our history many 
Territories were organized without a Legislature, with simply a governor and 
council, and if the Territory of Utah was fitted for anything in the form of civil 
government, a governor and council are as much as it ever ought to have had. 
I thus illustrate my opinion by a ease in point. 

These are the general views which I entertain of our right of protection and 
the duty of the Government. They are those which are entertained by the 
constituency I have the honor to represent, whose delegation has recently an- 
nounced them at Charleston. I honor the men, and cordially endorse their 
conduct. I think their bearing was worthy of their mother State; and doubt 
not she will receive them with approving gratitude. They have Asserted and 
vindicated her equality of right. By that assertion I doubt not she will stand. 
For weal or for woe, for prosperity or adversity, for the preservation of the 
great blessings which we enjoy, or the trial of a new and separate condition, 
1 trust Mississippi never will surrender the smallest atom of the sovereignty, in- 
dependence, and equality to which she was born, to avoid any danger or any 
sacrifice to which she may thereby be exposed. 

The sixth resolution of the series declares at what time a State may form a 
•onstitution and dec'de upon her domestic institutions. I deny this right to the 
territorial condition, because the Territory belongs in common to the StateB. 



14- 

Every citizen of the United States, as a joint owner of that Territory, has a 
right to go into it with any property which he may lawfully under the State 
government have possessed. These territorial inhabitants require municipal 
law, police, and government. They should have it, but it should be restricted 
to their own necessities. They have no right within their municipal power to 
attempt to decide the rights of the people of the States. They have no right 
to exclude any citizen of the United States from coming and equally enjoying 
this common possession ; it is for the purpose of preserving order, giving pro- 
tection to rights of person and property in the Territory, not to prejudice the 
interests of any State or citizen, that a municipal territorial government should 
be instituted. 

The last resolution refers to a law founded on a provision of the Constitution, 
one unanimously adopted, and which imposes a special obligation of faith on 
every State of the Union; but that obligation has been violated by thirteen 
States of the Confederacy — as many as originally fought the battles of the rev- 
olution and established the Confederation. Is it to be expected that a compact 
thus broken in part, violated in its important features by some, will be regarded 
as binding in all else by the others? Is the free trade which the North sought 
in the formation of the Union, and for which the States generally agreed to give 
Congress the power to regulate commerce, to be trampled under foot by laws 
of obstruction, not giving to the citizens of the South that free transit across 
the territory of the northern States which we might claim from any friendly 
State under Christendom; and is Congress to stand powerless by, on the doc- 
trine of non-intervention? We have a right to claim abstinence from interfer- 
ence with our rights from any government of the earth. Shall we claim no 
more from that which we have constituted for our own purposes, and which 
we maintain by draining our means for its support? 

We have had agitation, changing in its form, and gathering intensity, for the 
last forty years. It was first for political power, and directed against new 
States; now it ha3 assumed a social form, is all-pervading, and has reached 
the point of revolution and civil war. For it was only last fall that an open 
act of treason was committed by men who were sustained by arms and money, 
raised by exteusive combination among the non-slaveholding States, to carry 
treasonable war against the State of Virginia, because, as before the Revo- 
lution, and ever since, she holds the African in bondage. This is part of the 
history and marks of the necessity of the times. It warns us to stop and reflect, 
to go back to the original standard, to measure our acts by the obligation of our 
fathers, by the pledges they made one to another, to see whether we are con- 
forming to our plighted faith, and to ask seriously, solemnly — looking each 
other inquiringly in the face — what we should do to save our country. 

This agitation being at first one of sectional pride for political power, has at 
least degenerated or grown up to (as you please) a trade. There are men who 
habitually set aside a portion of money which they are annually to apply to 
what are called "charitable purposes;" that is to say, so far as I understand it, 
to support some vagrant lecturer, whose purpose is agitation and mischief wher- 
ever he goes. This constitutes, therefore, a trade ; a class of people are thus 
supported, employed for mischief, for incendiary purposes, perhaps not always 
understood by those who furnish the money; but such is the effect; such is the 
result of their action; and in this state of the case I call upon Senators to 
affirm the great principles on which our institutions rest. In no spirit of crimi- 
nation have I stated the reasons why the proposition is made. For these reasons 
I call upon them to restrain the growth of evil passion, and to bring back the 
public sense as far as in them lies, by earnest and united effort, if it may be, to 
crown our country with peace, and start it once more in its primal channel on 
a career of progressive prosperity and constitutional justice. 

The majority section have the power, why not use it? They cannot be strug- 
gling for additional power in k order to preserve their rights. If any of them 
ever believed in what is called southern aggression, they know now they have 
the majority in the representative districts and in the electoral college. They 
cannot, therefore, fear an invasion of their rights. They need no additional 
political power to protect them from that. The argument, then, or the pretext 
on which this agitation commenced, has passed away; and yet we are asked 
if a party hostile to our institutions shall gain possession of the Government, 
that we shall stand quietly by and wait for an overt act. Overt act! Is not 



15 

a declaration of war an overt act? What would be thought of a country that, 
after a declaration of war, and whilst the enemy's fleets were upon the sea, 
should wait until a city had been sacked before it would say that war existed, 
or resistance should be made? The power of resistance consists, in no small 
degree, iff meeting the evil at the outer gate. I can speak for myself— having 
no right to speak for others— and do say that if I belonged to a party organ- 
ized on the basis of making war on any section or interest in the United States, 
if I know myself, I would instantly quit it, We of the South have made no 
war upon the North. We have asked no discrimination in our favor. We 
claim but to have the Constitution fairly and equally administered. To con- 
sent to less than this woidd be to sink to the state of a tabooed caste ; would 
be to degrade our posterity so that they would curse this generation for robbing 
them of the rights their Revolutionary fathers bequeathed. 

Is this expected? Yet it is for the assertion of such thoughts, such intents 
as these, that we of the South are arraigned as threatening and attempting to 
menace the North. I understand the art which induces the use of that word 
"menace." No portion of our people are to be intimidated by threats. They 
all have much of that sentiment which feels a pride in the perilous hour; and 
therefore it is that our demand of equal rights, our assertion of the determina- 
tion never to surrender them, has been tortured into a menace to those with 
whom we have ever sought to live in peace. It is not a threat, but a warning. 
A warning given in the spirit of fraternity, when we say to those who have a 
common destiny, a common interest with us, stop, ere "your tread is on an 
empire's dust," it is not to destroy, but to avoid the alternative; we call you to 
the sober reckoning of the account before you. It woud be idle to expect 
us to be satisfied with declarations that the only purpose is to prevent 
slaves being taken into the Territories. That, if it were all designed, would 
be the cause of quarrel, because it is offensive, unjust, and, as I have endeav- 
ored to show, unconstitutional. We have a recent example, however, teach- 
ing a melancholy lesson of the madness and faithlessness of abolitionism. 
When the British emancipationists met at Old Jewry, they said their only 
object was to break up the slave trade — the amis des v.oirs of France — at 
first proclaimed their purpose to be the education of the mulattoes. The 
new schools progressed with hastening steps to a common goal. The steady 
growth of their purpose; the terrible catastrophes which ensued; the wide- 
spread ruin which now broods over the most fertile portion of the West Indies, 
proclaim how idle it is to rely on those who set out with no fixed rule of con- 
duct, t^heir imaginations turned loose on the field of mere speculative philosophy, 
and attempting, upon such a basis, to legislate for public interests. This Eng- 
lish teaching, this English philanthropy,^ to us what the wooden horse was at 
the siege of Troy. It has its concealed mischief; it is, I believe, the separation 
of these States ; the ruin of the navigating and manufacturing States, who are 
their rivals; not the southern States, who contribute to their wealth and pros- 
perity. Yet, strange as it may seem, there only do the seeds they scatter take 
root. British interference finds no footing, receives no welcome among us of 
the South; we turn with loathing and disgust from their mock -philanthropy 
and transparent disguises in relation to the slave trade. We look with sorrow 
mpon the gallant sailors of the United States who perish on the coast of 
Africa, participating in a scheme which is to people the British islands with 
Africans sent there from captured slavers. While we are amiably employing 
our navy and appropriating money to send the captured Africans back, not to 
their home — they had none — but to a colony founded by the United States, 
Great Britain transports her captives to her colonial possessions, and there, under 
the name of apprenticeship, compels them to labor. More horrible still: while 
preaching a crusade against the domestic institutions of the United States, she 
is engaged in a trade for a race of men sufficiently high in the scale of creation 
to value family ties and to feel the sentiment of home — coolies kidnapped; 
boys tolerably well educated, tradesmen, apothecaries, caught up in China 
and brought to be sold for a term of years, probably longer than they will live 
in field labor as cultivators of colonial s'^gar estates'. This offence against na- 
ture has met with some solemn retributions. The rising of these miserable cap- 
tives against the crews of the transports, attests the fraud and cruelty of the traf- 
fic. The horrible barbarity with which the trade is pursued, are to be seen in 
the accounts of wrecks where the hatches are battened down, the ship deserted 



16 

by the crew, left beating on the rocks, and these helpless prisoners, without the 
light of Heaven, or the chance to struggle against their late, left there to hear 
the roar of the relentless waves as they rush to complete the destruction begun 
by equally relentless men. With such manifestations as these, how can she 
assume to preach philanthropy to us because we hold in bondage a rac« of 
men, to whom slavery is the normal state, who never were free ; who, for thous- 
ands of years, have occupied the condition they did in the American colonies, 
and do now in the Southern States, and who live in a quietude and happiness 
which she might be well employed in bestowing on the suffering peasantry of 
England, and her colonial dependencies of the Eeat. 

Among the great purposes declared in the preamble of the Constitution is 
one to provide for the general welfare. Provision, due and ample, for the gen- 
ral welfare, implies general, cordial fraternity. This Union was not expected 
to be held together by coercion of the States, the power of force as a mean 
was denied. They sought, however, to bind it perpetually together with that 
which was stronger than triple bars of brass and steel — the ceaseless cur- 
rent of kind offices, renewing and renewed in an eternal flow, and gathering 
volume and velocity as it rolled. Its funetions were intended for the security 
of each, not for the injury of any. It declared its purpose to be the benefit of 
all. Concessions which were made between the different States in the con- 
vention prove the motive. Each gave to the other what was necessary to it; 
what each could afford to spare. 

Young as a nation, our triumphs under this system have had no parallel in 
human history. We have tamed a wilderness; we have spanned a continent. 
We have built up a granary that secures the commercial world against the fear 
of famine. Higher than all this, we have achieved a moral triumph. We have 
received, hy hundreds of thousands, a constant fide of immigrants — energetic, 
not well educated, fleeing, some from want, some from oppression, some from 
the penalties of violated law — the men who disturbed the quiet of Europe, we 
have received into our society; and by the gentle suasion of a Govern- 
ment which exhibits no force, by removing want and giving employment, they 
have subsided into peaceful citizens, and have increased the wealth and power 
of our country. 

If, then, this temple 60 blessed, to the roof of which men look for a protec- 
tion, coextensive with the continent, a shelter and a model to infant republics 
that need it — if this temple is tottering on its base, what, I ask, can be a higher 
or nobler duty for the Senate to perform than to rush to its pillars and uphold 
them, or be crushed in the attempt. We have tampered with a question v*hich 
has grown in magnitude by each year's delay. It requires to be fairly met; 
the truth to be plainly told. The practical sound sense of the people, when- 
ever the Federal Government from its high places of authority shall proclaim 
the truth in unequivocal language, will, in my firm belief, receive and approve 
it. But so long as we deal like the Delphic oracle, in words of double meaning, 
so long as we attempt to escape from responsibility, and exhibit our fear to de- 
clare the truth by the fact that we do not act upon it, we must expect specula- 
tive theory to occupy the mind of the public, and error to increase as time rolls 
on. But if the sad fate should be ours, for this unwarranted agitation most 
minute, unworthy cause of dissension, to see our Government destroyed, the 
historian, who shall attempt philosophically to examine the question, will, after 
he has put on his microscopic glasses and discovered it, be compelled to cry out, 
veritably so the unseen insect in the course of time destroys the mighty oak. 
I hope there is yet time by the full, explicit declaration of truth, to disabuse 
the public mind, to arouse the popular heart, to expose the danger from lurking 
treason and ill-concealed hostility; to rally a virtuous people to their country's 
rescue, who, circling closer and deeper round the ark of their Father's covenant, 
will bear it to a place of security, there to remain, a sign of fraternity, justice, 
and equality to our remotest posterity. 



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